Actes 5:4

Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.

Lying unto God.

I. The sin. Men lie unto God--

1. When they use their profession as members of the Church for an instrument of self interest.

2. By making false pretences in their routine of worship.

3. By breaking their covenant of consecration.

4. By the offering of insincere prayers.

5. By self seeking in acts of Christian zeal.

II. The retribution--

1. Was the visitation of God.

2. Often comes in the form of a de-moralisation of soul, which renders recovery impossible at the last. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)

The permanence of a lie

A little boy to sell his paper told a lie. The matter came up in the Sunday school. “Would you tell a lie for three cents?” asked a teacher of one of the boys. “No, ma’am,” answered Dick, very decidedly. “For ten cents?” “No, ma’am.” “For a dollar?” “No, ma’am.” “For a thousand dollars?” Dick was staggered, A thousand dollars looked big--it would buy lots of things. While he was thinking another boy cries out “No, ma’am, because when the thousand dollars are gone and the things you have got with them are gone too, the lie is there all the same.” Ah, yes! That is so. A lie sticks. Everything else may go, but that will stay, and you will have to carry it round with you, whether you will or no--a hard and heavy load. (Biblical Museum.)

Self deception

A man never deceives himself so much as when he attempts to deceive God. (J. Caryl.)

The retribution of falsehood

George Eliot, in “Romola,” powerfully illustrates in that remarkable book the embarrassments involved in one cowardly departure from truth. In the chapter headed “Tito’s Dilemma,” the occasion arises for Tito to fabricate an ingenious lie. Many Chapter s on we find him experiencing the inexorable law of human souls that we prepare ourselves for sudden deeds by the reiterated choice of good or evil that gradually determines character, and it becomes a question whether all the resources of lying will save him from being crushed. At another time we read: “Tito felt more and more confidence as he went on; the lie was not so difficult when it was once begun, and as the words fell easily from his lips, they gave him a sense of power such as men feel when they have begun a muscular feat successfully.” The penalty is enforced a few pages later. “But he had borrowed from the terrible usurer Falsehood, and the loan had mounted and mounted with the years, till he belonged to the usurer, body and soul.”